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Wednesday, July 26, 2006

As usual im too crazed (Gatorade) to be posting. Maybe i can find something delicious for the afternoon, but Piers has posted a video from his presentation at the Planning Conference asking people about inspiration. Take a look. You just might get inspired.PSFK+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Monday, July 24, 2006

The DIY movement strikes again!! Next up is the electronic license plate blurring device. At the flick of a switch, the electromagnetic gadget will obfuscate the numbers and letters of a license plate, making it nigh impossible for the long arm of the law to identify you. At least till they start implanting chips in the plates... It was produced for a team in the Bullrun, which is a cross-country race that's currently ongoing. Sorta like the Gumball rally in Europe, but the toned down American version. Granted this is probably illegal. Who needs laws?Now you don't+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Friday, July 21, 2006

Since we are living in an age of democratic everything, including content and content production on the internet, things are changed a bit. The LA Times newspaper has an article devoting coverage to the Lebanon-Israeli conflict that is comprised completely of Youtube clips. Anyone can be taken to the front lines. Zah2an, an american, has put together a moving montage of photos which show you the war we don't see. It's both terrifying and amazing to see what is going on there. With the age of the Internet we may never be in the dark, no matter how much media or governments want us to be. This poses some questions about the validity and reliance of a centered source for video content(even as Youtube is being sued for copyright infringement). Will channels for content pop up in their appropriate sector as HDs disappear and storage issues shrink? How will tagging effect this? Will this swing back to the importance of search Google and Yahoo rose to fame and fortune, or is content king over context?stop the violence+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Wednesday, July 19, 2006

Lately I've been too busy to put any meaningful posts down. No worries more goodness will be coming through soon. In the meantime, im regulated to pointing you to cool programs to use at home. Looking at happycorps site, i came upon this sweet flash photo viewer. PostcardViewer is a free Flash image viewer. The interface is based on the real world metaphor of a set of postcards shuffled onto a surface. Airtight Interactive have themselves a nice little program here.Postcards+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Thursday, July 13, 2006

Gotta love the open source army! Elephant’s Dream is the world’s first open source movie created with Blender, a completely open source 3D modeling animation program, so, if your complaining about expensive 3D software, you can get this one completely free. As for the Cinema portion of the movie, all the production files are available online for FREE. This includes interpretation and manipulation. Re-edited versions of the film are popping up on the web. And this movie looks damn good. It still has the everpresent opensource problem that only programmers really understand how to manipulate and add/change content. Hopefully one day Open Source will make everything as intuitive and as productive as possible for anyone to use just about anything. What other area's could open source tackle as well?BlenderElephant's Dream+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Friday, July 07, 2006

Very Cool toy from GE lets you work on a virtual whiteboard on the internet with fellow doodlers. You can easily invite others to join your session via email or IM. The whiteboard tools include free draw, lines, shapes, stamps, and text. Just think how this might work on a tablet PC, it's useful as an instant collaboration space from any computer. Draw away my friends.Lets Draw!+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd+

Jaguar has a new campaign of placing its XK model with beautiful people instead of celebrities. They clearly want to be associated with the creme de la creme' of society. The company has loaned 10 of its new XK models to Britain's & the USA's “beautiful people” in an interesting attempt to promote the vehicle among the wealthy wealthy. Instead, the car maker hopes that its snobby errr socialite brand ambassadors will stimulate demand by being seen in the right place at the right time on their new wheels. The idea is that friends and colleagues will rush off to the nearest Jaguar showroom. Each of the drivers, chosen for their trendsetting style and consumption, gets a free car for up to six months. Jaguar is using a similar strategy in American cities, including New York and Los Angeles. One lucky winner in Manhattan is Nico Bossi, a 27-year-old native of Rome who can be spotted at hip bars and clubs such as Milk and Honey and Soho House. Bossi, who runs his own marketing agency. Though i can't find the agency in a quick search, the amount of press generated has been staggering. Is this smart for jaguar? To ignore celebs who are guaranteed mass numbers via paparazzi and mags, by going with "real" people who have tight-knit circles who might acutally buy the cars. Are these the type of people though to get that red shirt if jorge is seen with it on? Im not terribly too sure. The campaign is smart though to place cars with real people, to establish some valid living connections on the merit of a breathing product demo. Only time will tell if there really is any spillover to sales or positive brand awareness. Ahhh the beauty of advertising. Jaguar im still waiting for mine. Black with chrome rims please...Im So Cool+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Lifefilter strongly believes that companies don't do enough to promote humanity or foster its well being. One day we hope that LF can become an outlet and enabler to helping humanity and the environment amongst other things. When ideas like this come along, the word needs to be spread. What is missing is a place that enables people to let their voice be heard and turn into action.From PDA Live:"Samsung’s Braille mobile phone for the visually impaired has won the Gold Award at the Industrial Design Excellence Awards (IDEA), one of the world's most authoritative design competitions. The “Touch Messenger” enables the visually impaired users to send and receive Braille text messages. The 3 x 4 button on the phone is used as two Braille keypads and text messages can be checked through the Braille display screen in the lower part. At the moment, the “Touch Messenger” is just a concept, but Samsung is willing commercialize it some day, which could boost the quality of life for as many as 180 million people worldwide."

I can only imagine how lonely or frustrating it must be to have cellular technology all around only not to be able to effectively interact with it. This is a great idea! Spread the word!Phone Home+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

A new video-sharing site is now offering videographers a share of the advertising dollars that their movies generate, at a time when most video-sharing sites are just trying to eke out a profit.(ed. note, this is what Google Video does, though im not sure how you actually get paid) Eefoof.com, is a site that promises to share a percentage of the site's revenue depending on how many viewers a video clip attracts. The founder invented that awesomely annoying PBJ time clip. Video sharing is pretty damn hot at the moment. Every day, people from all over the world are posting homemade movies at one of more than 150 sites. Sometimes those clips attract big audiences, sometimes they fade into oblivion. At places such as YouTube, Yahoo Video and eBaumsworld, the creators of popular clips aren't compensated. Right now more than 150 such companies are trying to figure out how to make money by hosting homemade movies on the Web. More than a year since its founding, YouTube has not yet fully disclosed what its revenue model will be. Sketchy, since we don't even know if its legal. Im still waiting for the first lawsuit. Other video-sharing companies, such as Guba, say they are profitable but aren't generating much cash. Guba expects to see $12 million in sales this year, according to Thomas McInerney, the company's CEO. Interesting concept that now people can get paid for content rather than giving it away for free. You may be asking why anyone wouldn't want to get paid either, but humans are irrational and could flock to a site like Youtube based on comfort, ease,familiarity, popularity, etc etc. Look at how Google launched,no ads, no extras, and other search engines were even better. Yet it lived on. It will be interesting to see if sites like this can gain a foothold, much like the internet when it took off, offering everything for free(before the jackals descended and now everything costs something). This could be a major crossroads for media and content as far as what drives it. If the revenue model can beat the freebies, then the cycle seems to start all over. People use the site, advertisers come, sell ads, and its the same. If people stick with free information platforms, people will be forced to innovate. It will also stretch into other forms of media as well. Current TV has a model similar to this for tv/pods. This begs the question what is the cost of media?PeanutButterJellyTime+tag me++del.icio.us+digg+marktd